She said, "yeah, if they're going to break, it's usually the first or second time they get used."
Has anyone else heard this story from a rod manufacturer?

Having nothing to do with fly rods but back in my working days there were expected to be 'early life failures' sometimes called infant mortality. These were manufacturing defects which could not be screen out with normal testing procedures. They were infrequent but did happen. When a product got past the first few months of use it was past the infant mortality period and would then experience a low failure rate for a long time. Then when the product had been in use for an extended period, in other words getting old, the failure rate would go up because of "end of life" problems. More than you ever wanted to know.